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This dish at Imee’s Mediterranean Restaurant in Chicago is inspired by Lebanese-American owner Nicole Nassif’s family gatherings during her childhood, when people would share traditional recipes like this one for which very lean (around 95%) lamb or beef chuck is browned with onions, salt, allspice, cinnamon and pine nuts.
That’s cooled and then combined with puffed bulgur wheat (made by soaking it in warm water until it swells and then drying it out), raw onions, cinnamon, salt and pepper, blended into a paste and chilled.
Next she butters a 9-by-13-inch pan and lines the bottom with raw lamb. Then she forms the browned spiced meat blend into patties and places them evenly over the raw meat. That’s topped with more raw meat.
She cuts the meat into geometrical patterns such as squares and diamonds, pours butter over the top and then bakes it for around an hour.
Price: $19
This special pizza from Square Pie Guys, a pizzeria with three locations in the San Francisco Bay area, is a collaboration between owners Marc Schechter and Danny Stoller and NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin. Available through September, 3% of sales go to the Jeremy Lin Foundation, which helps to support at-risk Asian-American, Pacific Islander and cross-racial youth.
Playing on the love of many Americans to add ranch dressing to their pizza, this square, pan-baked pie is topped with white sauce (ricotta cheese, cream, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper), pepperoni, chile flake, parsley, grated grana cheese and a drizzle of green goddess dressing, which the owners say “gives ranch lovers that extra creaminess while adding an added layer of herbs and tang.”
Price: $24.50
For this variation on a French 75 at DDT, a South African-influenced professional wrestling themed bar in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Park Slope, co-owner and “barkeep” Suzy Tyson uses as her base Cruxland Gin, a South African spirit which has aromatics including rooibos, honeybush, anise, coriander, lemon, almond, juniper and Kalahari truffles. She combines an ounce of that with half an ounce each of lemon juice and simple syrup. She shakes those ingredients with ice, pours them into a wine glass and tops the drink with three ounces of Graham Beck Méthode Cap Classique Brut Rosé sparkling wine from South Africa. She garnishes the cocktail with a slice of cantaloupe that has been dehydrated with rosemary
Price: $16
For this meatless version of a Beef Wellington, Chris Crary, executive chef of 1 Kitchen Nashville, makes a duxelles by sweating finely processed mushrooms, truffles and shallots in butter and finishing it with thyme, vinegar and truffle oil. He puts a spoonful of that in the center of a puff pastry square and tops it with a fork-tender roasted beet. He coats the beet with more duxelles, seals it in the puff pastry and bakes it until golden brown.
He plates celery root purée cooked with milk and tops that with beet greens sautéed in olive oil, salt and pepper. He puts the Beet Wellington on top of the greens and finishes the plate with sweetened red wine reduction finished with butter, salt and pepper and a small amount of truffle oil.
Price: $18
At Cordelia, a new restaurant in Cleveland by former Greenhouse Tavern partner Andrew Watts and chef Vinnie Cimino, the takes cold fried chicken leftover from the previous night’s service, slices it and combines it with peaches grilled with salt and sugar. He serves it over Duke’s mayonnaise spiked with hot sauce, an agrodolce made with red verjus, sugar and a little vinegar and pickled okra.
“The moral of the dish is less about the preparation of the final plate, as we always change it up, but the utilization of leftover fried chicken from last night’s service,” Cimino said.
“There is just something special about cold fried chicken,” he said. “Not just a midnight snack or drunken indulgence, but a comforting feeling like a hug.”
Price: $17
